Gamespot, amongst many other fatuous and pointless websites, have commented on the glorious gib-splattering year of FPS gaming ahead. Indeed, the imminent releases (read: delays) of Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 co-op and so on, do leave me tingling with soon-to-be-disappointed anticipation.

What better way to herald in the best games of 1864, or whenever they were originally scheduled for release, than to have a retrospective debate upon the top ten FPS games of yesteryear? - thus filling editorial space with ease whilst making the readership feel like their opinions matter.

And since PlanetCrap has been as dead as the Mega-Beaver recently, why not copy said fatuity and gross pointlessness?

However, for our own musings, I suggest that the FPS games be separated into multiplayer and singleplayer categories, with mods standing alone on their own merits (though modability might be a criteria in rating a game). Judgements would be better based on personal enjoyment (at the time) rather than impact or importance to the genre.

Even though I voted yes I'm still going to grief and whine about not being one to make lists.

Eh, fine, Half-Life would be on top of the singleplayer list I'm not making. I believe it marked the first "deep" gaming experience, where I learnt to appriciate the story and atmosphere, not just endlessly gunning down foes.

Which means my list ends at Half-Life I guess, because everything before that was pretty much just me wasting my time on a piece of mindless entertainment.

This list will be games that I consider revolutionary (from my perspective). There are other games that I liked a lot that I won't put on this list, NOLF for example, becuase, will executed very well, didn't do anything that I didn't see before.

The single player games were pretty easy to list, and I love them all very much. For multiplayer games, my enjoyment peters out after SoF2 considerably. I never really got into UT mulitplayer over the Internet, mostly just LAN play. I spent a good few years playing Quake II team games, simply because there was little else worth playing at the time, but I still have fond memories of that time.

Failing this, prizes will* be awarded for coming up with a sentence that most concisely references as many FPS games as possible.

What's intriguing about the lists so far is the division between singleplayer and multiplayer showing quite a marked difference in gaming eras. Deus Ex is the most recent game to have reached the top in most people's singleplayer categories (and that's a strange case of hybridity in an FPS anyway) but the multiplayer tends to show quite a few more recent games. Why do you guys think this is?

Is there more potential diversity in multiplayer? More longevity?

Also, another curiosity, is that I am more easily able to quantify and explain my preferences amongst the singleplayer games - Half-Life's depth and involvement, Unreal's alien, exotic atmosphere etc. - but largely unable to tell you why, for example, Quake 3 deathmatch is in my top 5 and UT deathmatch isn't. Is the enjoyment of multiplayer a more intangible experience?

I'd say MP is on the rise because broadband is becoming more widespread, and people are getting tired of the limitations of current AI. Sure, circle-strafing isn't exactly the height of human tactics and strategy, but I'd rather shoot someone I know in an online (demo) than shoot Bland Clone #958 in Single-Player Shooter Clone #736.

Large areas, vehicles, classes, and a slower gaming experience adds up to a game in which you don't die instantly nonstop, and which allows you some choice in how you play. You aren't always doing the same thing, and two games can be completely different experiences depending on what you choose to do during the game. You can play defensively and keep your base and/or vehicles fixed up and setting traps. You can play offensively and just go blow the shit out of the enemy's base. You can play sneakily and just skirt around the edges of the map on foot, sniping people at a distance then moving somewhere else. You can be a taxi driver and just ferry people back and forth between bases and combat areas.

I can also quantify why I prefer the original UT:

It's a slower paced game experience compared to the quake games, and CTF was infinitely more enjoyable than the standard deathmatch that had been the main focus before that. On top of that, you spawn with a weapon that is perfectly viable in combat. On top of that, most of the weapons were balanced to the point where there wasn't really a rush to have a certain weapon, and you could manage to defend yourself and kill reliably with just about any weapon you happened to have. I felt that UT was more dependant on my skill than my luck, whereas in the quake games, it always felt that unless you spawned close to a rocket launcher, you were just fucked. A lot of other games share this kind of problem.

Oh, also, another thing that was really good about BF1942 and Tribes was that you didn't have to worry about finding weapons or whatnot, you could just spawn with them (BF1942), or spawn next to an inventory station (Tribes).

Widespread means the people I know, whose company I can tolerate, have a higher probability of having access to broadband. In any other sense, widespread means I just have a higher chance of encountering a fuckwit on a pserve, yes.

Oh yeah two late additions as I thought a little more and looked over my CD rack. Tron 2.0 for singleplayer, although it also has its share of pain in the ass jumping, and Savage: Battle for Newerth for multiplayer, because I like being a grunt in an RTS, speaking of such I had a lot of fun in Renegade multiplayer too.

Two more things. One a game that I forgot but that deserves props for being the lone really good horror FPS is Undying. And has anyone heard anything on the game Breakdown that's coming out today for the XBOX? Looks pretty nifty, but alot of people haven't liked it so I am wary. Still first person fighter could be a kick.

Tribes was a fantastic experience for the first six months. It was radically different than Quake/Quake 2 but by the time skiing heavies became a fixture, my interest waned. Tribes 2 was beset by many problems and failed to rekindle my initial excitement. For that six month bubble, though, Tribes was a great game, even in the unholy world of pubs.

Over the last year, my multiplayer games have been almost exclusively on private servers. I find it hard to tolerate the nonsense of pubs now, so large scale games like BF1942 are pretty much ignored.

For single player, my biggest problem is lack of immersion and tired, annoying conventions. To wit: Half-Life created a virtually seamless world, had NPC's you could directly interact with, gave you an identity and purpose and led you through a variety of credible environments (yes, I even include Xen, which I thought felt convincingly alien). While HL had its share of annoying puzzles (hello, teleporter chamber) and ended with a nonsensical final boss, the overall package was very engaging.

Compare this to Unreal 2 which I recently played through. It innovates in one area, graphics. The levels are incredibly lush, the amount of detail is significantly higher than any other single player shooter I've played. But to what end? Apart from a few "defend the base" missions, it's a bog standard FPS. You have an absurdly huge arsenal of weapons, you get mission briefings that are irrelevant since you just go in and blast everything, anyway. The NPC's are stereotypes or the product of male adolescent fantasies (like Aida, the math genius/space whore). You plod through level after leve, gunning away and the whole experience feels pointless. I was actually annoyed by the time the game ended.

Is it really that hard to create a single player game that really draws you in? It would seem so given how few have managed to grab me over the last decade.

Possibly. A lot of the reasons why I chose the games I did was based on overall enjoyment, which encompassed everything from how much I enjoyed the actual mechanics of the gameplay to the thrill of playing it to the people I was playing with. I had completely forgotten Enemy Territory in my list and would gladly switch that out for Loki's CTF and place it higher on the list (just after SoF2). A lot of this has to do with the fact that I've enjoyed pretty much every game I've played with the 'Crappers.

Threewave CTF and Tribes 2 are at the top of my list because those were the times I've worked best with the people I was teamed with. I've been in about 5-6 clans/tribes in my life and those two stand out as the best times I've ever had gaming.

#37 dookieagain

Tron 2.0 for singleplayer, although it also has its share of pain in the ass jumping ...

Normally that would have pissed me off, but because there had been a lot of jumping about in the film, I really couldn't fault the design for being true to the setting.

Undying was good on the first run at it, but it dragged horribly towards the end, subsequent replays have all ended with 'ugh, can't be bothered' and uninstallation.

Tribes, I played to death online via a 56k connection, mostly to US servers, very forgiving netcode in that game.

C&C Renegade was dreadful in single player, but the multiplayer had a certain charm to it, certain fun enough to keep 20 odd people playing overnight at a lan.

Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight was a great single player game, but the cheats ruined multiplayer, Jedi Knight 2: Outcast was so, so, multiplayer was alright, but singleplayer, the most fun I had was downloading the 'Duel' map and facing wave after wave of jedi. JK:Academy was meh in singleplayer but the new moves made multiplayer fun for a while, very cinematic and the 2 on 1 mode was a challenge, but ultimately, the games engine hampered it too damn much.

Do not go gently into that good night.
Old age should burn and rage at the close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Is it really that hard to create a single player game that really draws you in?

I'm going to say yes. When you think of it, there are very few SP FPS games that draw you into its world. That that I can think of offhand include Deux Ex, Thief, HL, and Doom. I may have left a few out, but they have been few and far between. It is eaiser to create a good MP game than it is a good SP one. Just look at ET, canned because of the SP, but the MP got a free release.

Yeah Undying didn't really stand up to multiple playthroughs, but no FPS I can think of really has for me, once in a while I'll run the human SP part of the AvP games, which is a great atmospheric romp. And System Shock and the Deus Ex games are good for a chance to see how else to complete an objective, but most of my FPS impressions are based on one playthrough type experiences, also usually on the "normal" difficulty. Halo is a rare exception because the Legendary difficult is a wholey different and much more fun experience than the single player on normal.

Thanks to the resounding failure of Hip Hop Day, I've decided that a new, better day will be instated this Friday. That's right, it's "Jibble's-Getting-Married-and-You-Don't-Have-To-Wade-Knee-Deep-Through-Posts-All-Day-for-Two-Weeks Day" or "Planetcrap Freedom Day" for short.

March 19th, everything changes*.

*Offer expires April, 2004. Coupons may not be redeemed at a later date.

"No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating." - Harold Rosenberg